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By Root 491 0

in Islamabad—a driver I had found in the spring of 2006, a young man of about twenty who was as skinny as a coat hanger and as efficient as a Japanese train. He wore sweater vests and hipster rectangular glasses and had no beard, even when he was living in his car-rental agency because his brother had kicked him out of the house for not paying enough rent. I trusted him so much that I gave him my bank card and the code to my account—or maybe I was just that lazy. Samad called me “boss.” Often he wouldn’t look me in the eye—he looked down at the ground, his hands clasped behind his back. This was part of the country’s class system, most likely a hangover from the caste system of India or the deference paid to the British. Like other foreigners, I tried to establish a more egalitarian workforce. I sat in the front seat next to Samad instead of in the back. We played a game whenever he parked. I would grab my bag and try to open the car door. He would run around the car and try to open my door first. Samad would also follow me, picking up the crumpled money that fell out of my purse, occasionally the forgotten passport. Samad was as prepared as a new father. He had stocked his trunk with lemon juice, vinegar, bandannas, and cheap Speedo swimming goggles, defensive weapons against tear gas. Without Samad, I was a mess. With him, I almost functioned. He was the closest person I had to a Farouq here.

I figured I would lead a cloistered life in Islamabad, given the lack of options. But at a press conference with one of many visiting U.S. officials in the basement of the Serena, I noticed a reporter I hadn’t seen before. Blue eyes, graying hair, a beard. I wondered who he was, and in Islamabad, it didn’t take long to find out. The following weekend, at a party at the Australian embassy, I spotted him talking to mutual friends. Fueled by the courage of whiskey and sodas and a short black skirt, I introduced myself to him, shortly after realizing that I was dancing sexy in a circle of women, which was fine but not the message I was trying to send.

“So I just realized I was dancing in a circle of women,” I said, master of the pickup line. “I figured I’d rather introduce myself to you.”

Sitting in the grass and watching everyone else dance, Dave and I talked for more than an hour about the horrors of Islamabad, the pressures of work. He rode a motorcycle, spoke three languages, and planned to quit his journalism job soon to write a book in Afghanistan. I could have interpreted that as an adrenaline addiction. I chose to see it as passion. From the beginning I thought Dave could be the answer to the question of work-life balance. A reporter like me, who liked to live overseas like me, who liked adventure like me. All this ran through my head in thirty seconds. Within days, we settled into an easy romance—curry egg sandwiches in the morning, occasional episodes of Fawlty Towers in the afternoon, motorcycle rides in the evening to the only Italian joint in town that served wine. Then, of course, we had our date at a riot, where we dodged tear gas, rocks, and lawyers, me limping because I had dislocated a pinky toe on a piece of furniture while railing about Musharraf. As usual, work overshadowed everything. Soon the political landscape would make it even worse.

Rumors swirled about a potential power-sharing deal between Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto, the former Pakistani prime minister who had been in exile for eight years. Since her early popularity, her reputation had been stained, particularly because of credible claims of corruption against her and her husband. But even in exile, Bhutto was the most popular civilian leader in the country, maybe because of the lack of options. The Americans and the British had pushed a Bhutto-Musharraf deal, seeing it as a way to bring stability to Pakistani politics. That way, the government would have a civilian face and the West would still have its favorite military strongman. Pakistan could then focus on what the West saw as crucially important—the war on terror.

The pieces of the deal fell